8 thoughts on “More Money Down The Drain”

  1. Huge waste of money. A nice score for NG. Bet they get to buy the drinks the next time they get together with the AF bros.

    Another horrible wrinkle in this story … SpaceX got exactly zero dollars of this “development” money, while ALL the other players got big $$$. Because no good deed goes unpunished … a company that devs, tests, and builds it’s own rocket with it’s own money can just go jump in a lake. Thanks AF. Thanks Washington.

    1. “SpaceX got exactly zero dollars…”

      I believe that was SpaceX’ choice. The money wasn’t free; it was attached to strings allowing the Air Force to, ahem, “advise” the recipients on how to proceed.

  2. It’s like the old joke:

    $50/hour to do the work
    $100/hour if you watch us work
    $500/hour if you give us advice while we work
    $10000/hour if you insist on helping us

  3. For extra cynicism, I’ll point out that NG’s pitch for OmegA is that no development is required; it’s just off-the-shelf catalog-item SRM’s practically duct-taped together, Kerbal-style. I do understand there’s quite a bit of work to get such a concept to a launch pad, but that wasn’t done, and nothing went near a launch pad. So far as I can tell, the only “technology” I got for my $500m was teaching the spellchecker to start capitalizing the ends of words.

    1. Slightly different take: This is a good development because they didn’t get selected for the next round. In the past, would this have happened or would they have continued collecting money for nothing?

      NASA, under the previous three administrations, took a series of small measured risks and then rewarded success or cut their losses. While they hoped everything would be successful, they planned on some of these companies failing and the money spent on seeing if they could succeed was worth the cost of failure. Perhaps the Thief in Chief, Biden, will continue this.

      1. He will outsourve to mainland China launches after Hunter Biden gets a cushy oversight position on the corporation that transfers launch technology to the CCP. Well… officially transfers the stuff they have already stolen.

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